


OMO Wooster and the Standing Stones at Midnight

by Culumacilinte



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Espionage, Gen, Hospitals, Spy Jeeves, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:44:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/pseuds/Culumacilinte
Summary: In the thick of the Great War, intelligence officer Reginald Jeeves is injured, and forced by circumstance to rely upon the help of hapless, well-intentioned medical orderly Bertie Wooster





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slavetohiscat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slavetohiscat/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, slavetohiscat! I have always imagined that Jeeves might have been a spy prior to getting into valeting, and when you said AUs were your favourite thing, that was the first thing to come to mind-- finally, a chance to write spy!Jeeves! I had a lot of fun writing this; I hope it hits the spot.

I have never been a believer in the so-called natural intelligence espoused by so many philosophers of the last century, which has been used to further enforce so many arbitrary and unnatural social boundaries upon which the ruling classes depend. The brain, from my understanding of it, is a supremely malleable organ, and if exercised sufficiently, intelligence will follow. Nor indeed is intelligence merely a measure of how many poets or philosophers one can quote, or whether an Oxford don will consent to take one seriously. It has been my fortune, however, to be imbued since my youth with the great desire to advance myself, and a certain flexibility and cleverness which has served me well throughout my life.

My family was never wealthy enough to send me to any but the local educational establishments, and a boy who must work for a living has neither the time nor the luxury to attend university. I am thus almost entirely self-educated. I have applied myself to matters of history, literature, language, philosophy, the sciences of the mind and body; in all these, the ability to read, and the mental acuity to analyse and compare have been been sufficient tools. Indeed, I suspect that the fact that I was compelled by circumstance to be my own tutor, to engage in private Socratic dialogues instead of relying upon the words of academics, has, if anything, furthered my intellectual capacities.

I say all this not to brag, but merely to provide the background of my position. It is for these reasons that when the War broke out in 1914, I applied myself to the recently-founded intelligence services, feeling sure that I would be of more use there than I might at the front. It seemed to me-- and indeed the course of events has proven me correct in this suspicion-- that modern methods of combat were rapidly outstripping hundreds of years of military convention. In such a case, one cannot expect to attain victory merely by throwing hapless men at one’s enemy; intelligence and more covert manipulation of events are required.

I nevertheless began my service at the front, as an intelligence officer, where it was my necessary but unpleasant task to see to the extraction of information from enemy prisoners or captured defectors. I was, I will say, very good at my job, which gave me a certain measure of satisfaction. Though the tasks I undertook were often gruesome, there is pleasure to be had in competence, and performing a task well. I have since been assigned other operations, and have found great gratification in applying myself to cryptographic work, working to equip the Allied forces with the information they needed, and when possible to forestall enemy movements before it even came to a matter of combat.

It has been a point both of pride and gratitude that I had not sustained any great injuries during my time in service. Well I know that this has little to do with my own abilities; it is of no matter how intelligent or fit a man is when he is met with a mine or a missile. Still, if I have one weakness, it is perhaps a slight tendency towards smugness-- I will admit this; _Go into your own ground and know yourself there_ , as Meister Eckhart had it. I had not been to the front in some time, having been occupied in the continent with citizen intelligence networks, and it is a matter of purest misfortune that during the course of my visit to report to the Major General, I was injured in the blast of a shell, which the men call a Flying Pig.

It is fortunate that I was as far away from the mortar as I was, but I nevertheless sustained several injuries. The muscle and tendon of both thigh and calf of my right leg were lacerated by flying shrapnel, and my left arm was broken-- although thankfully not severely. The arm was set and splinted at the casualty clearing station, but the severity of the leg injury was sufficient that they were compelled to send me to the nearest base hospital for proper treatment and convalescence. At the time, I admit, I took this with some ill grace. Though I am perfectly aware of practical, medical necessity, inaction has always chafed at me.

The hospital was one of many such set up in the French countryside, and unremarkable, except perhaps for those with a disposition towards the romantic. Between the hospital building and the distant sea were two standing stones, though one had since slumped down into a drunken angle. Just the thing that to a certain mindset, might suggest Druidic sacrifice or mysterious mists and magic under full moons. Being less than romantically inclined myself, I primarily wished that I had the use of my leg, so that I might examine them.

Once my wounds were dressed and stitched and my leg splinted to keep the muscle properly aligned for the healing process, I needed little active care from the doctors. It was merely a matter of changing dressings, keeping them clean, providing me with analgesics, and so on, tasks taken care of by orderlies. Which is how I came into the acquaintance of OMO Bertram Wooster.

'What ho, what ho!' he cried the first time he bounced up to my bed, clipboard at the ready. 'Mr. Jeeves, is it?'

I blinked up at him; things were not quite so sombre at the base hospitals, further back from the line, and with more people recovering than actually in the process of horribly dying, but I had expected neither the enthusiasm nor the particular turn of phrase. He was a young man, perhaps some ten years my junior, though with such a youthful face that it was hard to tell precisely, tall and willowy, with absurdly huge, bright blue eyes. His uniform fit him well, and indeed he appeared spry and fit in every way; that too was not expected, and I hesitated perhaps a moment overlong. 'It... is, yes.'

'Dicky ticker, and blind as a particularly nearsighted mole in m'left eye', he said cheerfully, indicating the eye in question with a wink. Though I had not inquired, I could only suppose he was used enough to dealing with questions that he had simply started pre-empting them. 'Couldn't join up even if I'd tried, but, you know, all my chums are out there getting blown to bits for Blighty, so it's the least a bod can do to volunteer where he can, what?'

'I suppose I cannot argue with that', I conceded, though I was not entirely able to keep the touch of irony out of my voice. Wooster smiled broadly.

'Corking! Then all's oojah-cum-spiff. It's Wooster, by the way, Bertie Wooster; looks like I'll be the one keeping you all in one piece while you're staying on. Let's have a dekko at this bum pin of yours, shall we?'

And so he proceeded, chattering amiably away as he peeled away and redressed bandages. He wrinkled his nose at the first sight of my mangled thigh, and sucked at his teeth, but tied up my leg with the quick competence of muscle memory.

In the days and weeks following, Wooster stopped by my bed several times a day. The blindness in his left eye, I learned, was the result of being struck with a cricket ball as a youth. The 'dicky ticker' he had no such explanation for, but I learned much about his tastes in music and fiction, the various absurd exploits he'd got up to with his friends at school, and several improbable accidental engagements. He made occasional brief references to deceased parents, and a still-living sister and cadre of aunts, but seemed far less keen to dwell on those subjects.

Returning to my thoughts on intelligence; OMO Wooster struck me as a man who had not, over the course of his life, been given much reason to strive to exercise his brain, and who was only now discovering that he might have. To his credit, I perceived that he was doing his best to remedy that fact; he certainly had no medical training, nor indeed-- or so I surmised from his witterings-- any especial interest in the field, but whilst he was here, he seemed to be trying with an earnest effort to improve himself. And this effort stemmed not merely from the necessity of his position, but, I think, out of a genuine desire to _help_ , and to be of use.

I will not shy from admitting that outside of the context of the hospital, his was not the sort of company I would have sought out, but circumstances have certainly forced me into less amiable company in the past. If he was not the most intelligent of men, he at least was honest and good-natured. Occasionally, he expressed regrets that he could not join his friends at the front (schoolfellows from Oxford, or acquaintances from his London club, at which understanding I did have to restrain a certain amount of judgement. Of course it is always those who have easy access to such luxuries who never think to take full advantage of them); such regrets might have been the stuff of poetry and propaganda, I reminded him; the case may be that _dulce et decorum est_ , as Horace wrote, but I doubted that a man of his temperament would be well-served by the front.

'There is more to war than being shelled and starving in the trenches, Mr. Wooster', I said. 'Though their service cannot be overlooked, it is not those men who will win us this fight.'

He blinked at me then; it was a thing he did with some frequency, and all the more noticeable for his large, luminous eyes. 'What, the brass hats and chaps like you, you mean to say? Oiling about behind the scenes pulling the strings and all that?'

I had never said in so many words that I was a spy; discretion, after all, is of the utmost import, but Wooster had imputed as much, and thought the notion dreadfully romantic. 'You may have me confused with the Field Marshal', I demurred wryly, and he laughed so hard he very nearly threw his head back with the force of it.

'Tchah, hardly, Mr. Jeeves!'

'Tchah?'

'With knobs on! Not to speak ill of the old pudding, but he doesn't seem like the sharpest of thingummies, really, does he? You said the thing yourself! War needs a trifle more in the way of strategy than simply chucking the poor old Tommies at the Bosch front line over and over, and you seem like a cannier cove by far. I was observing to the head nurse, don't you know, on the way your cranium protrudes in the back. She did say that the size of a chap's grey matter has no bearing on intelligence, but I've got my suspicions.'

He said things like this occasionally, and was so guileless about it that I couldn't help a slight smile. 'You speak with great confidence, given the brevity of our acquaintance. And _I_ was speaking of you and your colleagues here, as well as... others.'

Whereupon he actually waggled a finger at me. 'A Wooster knows; we're a keen lot.'

It was, all in all, a peculiar sort of friendship, but a friendship was undoubtedly what it was. I had the impression that before the War, Wooster had had a wide social circle and spent his time immersed in it. His behaviour now was not unlike that of a puppy, imprinting on anyone willing to give it table scraps and a scratch behind the ear. I could not bring myself to resent it; truthfully, he did make my days more bearable.

It was some weeks into my recovery that I came into the possession of... certain knowledge regarding Hindenburg's plans for German troop movement and actions to be taken. In a hospital, as in any enclosed environment, talk flows freely, and I had not kept my ears shut simply because I was restricted to my bed. Even here I dare not be any more explicit than that, except to say that it was a change from the information I'd gone to the front to report. I had not had a chance to deliver that information before the mortar blast, and now it was abruptly more imperative than ever that I report to _someone_.

My options were frustratingly limited. It was plain that I could accomplish nothing by myself, and I was loath to trust such delicate information to writing, no-matter how carefully I might code it. With little else to occupy myself, confined to my bed, it did not take long for me to run through a mental list of options and discard most of them, and at the end of this task, I was left with only one.

'Mr. Wooster, I have something to ask of you.'

I said this in a quiet, utterly conversational tone as soon as he came to my bed that afternoon to conduct his usual checks; though the ward was not as busy as those in the field hospitals, it was nevertheless rarely empty. There was no way to have a truly private conversation. Wooster looked down at me in some confusion.

'Eh? Oh, er, ask away, old fruit, ask away.'

I proffered my leg for him to examine, keeping my voice and expression mild. 'You have some notion of what it is I do; there is information which I need to get to MI1 in London with some urgency, and I would prefer not to involve the Lieutenant-Colonel. The fewer people I can involve, the better, do you understand?'

'I-- yes!' he ejaculated, and then cleared his throat bashfully, looking nervous. 'That is-- I mean, of course, anything for king and country and all that, but I hardly see how a fellow like me is going to be of any use...'

'All I will need you to do', I said, 'is to have a telegram sent-- the usual way, there is no need for any especial secrecy there-- and if I am able to arrange it through those channels, to act as proxy for me and meet with someone outside the hospital. Everything will be in code, I will instruct you, I will make everything as simple as possible; is that something you feel you can do?'

It seemed to be taking him considerable effort not to simply _gape_ at me, and I sighed minutely. 'I realise this is very sudden, and I apologise for springing it on you in this manner; if there were any better solution, believe me, I would take it.'

'But you... that is to say, you'd trust Bertram to do that?'

I finally met his eyes, lifting an eyebrow. 'Needs must in war, Mr. Wooster, and we do have-- a rapport, I believe. I trust you to understand my urgency and not mire me in needless bureaucracy.'

This may, to a civilian ear, seem underhanded or dubious, or unnecessarily secretive, and it may have seemed so to Wooster as well, but after a few moments of waffling, he deflated, looking both nervous and intrigued. 'Proper spy-work then, eh? Well! Dash it if I won't do my bit; said that was what I wanted, didn't I?'

'Indeed you did.'

I wrote out the telegram for him to transcribe and send off for me, a request for a meeting, important information from agent Thorned Beehive; all in code that would be well-understood to the men at Whitehall, there would seem nothing peculiar about it to anyone else. The sending and receiving of telegrams was perfectly usual for patients; indeed, some of the wealthier ones, men who might have been Wooster's peers before the War broke out, were in the habit of being posted ostentatious care packages from their families back in England.

In the meanwhile, while I-- while we-- waited, I took the time to coach Wooster on the coded message he would have to impart, being careful to be as discreet as possible.

'Oh, I did Scripture Knowledge at prep school, I daresay I should be able to wrap the coconut 'round a few piddling codewords, what?'

It was not very much to memorise, a mere few lines of dialogue, paired with their correct responses, but of course I couldn't tell the man what any of the code actually meant, and memorising by rote independent of meaning is a different matter. There were a few moments of frustration on my part, and barely-concealed fear on his, that he would be unable to fully remember the precise sentences as I gave him them, but he did eventually master it, to my great relief.

'Just set it to a tune!' he confided gaily. 'A few hours of humming the thing to myself and there it was, lodged firmly in the grey matter.' He rapped his knuckles against his temple. It was, I had to admit, a very clever solution, and one I would not have thought of myself.

The timing of his solution was as fortuitous as it could possibly be, because it was the next day that I received a telegram in return, agreeing to my plan as stated, and naming the time and place. One o'clock in the morning, by the standing stones.

'Have you a weapon? A handgun, a club?' I inquired, and Wooster blinked in apparent incomprehension. His smooth brow knotted, and his mouth began to purse into the beginning of a question; I forestalled him. 'In the eventuality that something should go wrong, Mr. Wooster. I have done everything to ensure that this should be a simple rendezvous, but in my current position, I cannot be sure. Are you able to defend yourself should you have to?'

It seemed that this was the first time that thought had crossed his mind, and I marvelled that he was able to maintain such an outlook, guileless and trusting, given his-- our-- current position. Though I had not known him for long, his face is one which expresses every humour and mood with the greatest clarity, and I thought now, that under the startlement and slight fear I could see, there was some measure of abashment that the thought had not already occurred to him. He laughed, a little shakily. 'Oh, rather! Got the old Colt Pocket, what? Trusty and discreet and all that, don't you worry about B. Wooster.'

A regulation-issue pistol, and certainly the only reason Wooster had it was because it had been handed out to him with his uniform; he had never used that gun on another human being in his life. I kept my expression neutral, but internally I cursed. It was too late for anything to be done now; my information had to be communicated, the rendezvous had been set, and I could hardly appeal to some other member of hospital staff.

Bertie Wooster was a member of the RAMC, and as such prepared to risk himself in the line of duty, which was quite as it should be, but I had no desire to be responsible for his death. The man may have been mentally negligible, and with a temperament entirely unsuited for the military, but he was a _good_ man, uncynical and willing to help without question, possessed of a good nature I have found rare enough even outside of wartime. A moment of eye contact passed then, in which we were both keenly aware of what might transpire later tonight.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it. I have not acquired my position by wallowing in sentimentality; even were I of a nature inclined towards such. I had done everything that might be done, and now there was nothing for it but to trust. I drew a breath, and Wooster bounced a little on the spot, summoning a smile.

'Buck up, Jeeves old prune! I know I'm only a duffer and all that, but what can go wrong with your grey matter behind me?'

My mouth twitched. 'Indeed.'

It would have seemed peculiar for him to check in with me before sneaking out to make the rendezvous, but we had agreed that he would give a signal outside my window at ten minutes before one, and there, right on time, he was. A lanky figure down on the patchy lawn, who threw a (sloppy, I couldn't help but note) salute up towards me, and then trotted off into the misty dark.

And then there was nothing to be done but wait. The standing stones were far enough from the hospital that I would not have been able to make out much even in the light of day, and with nothing but moonlight to illumine the scene, Wooster's figure disappeared long before he'd reached the menhirs.

The whole affair took no longer than fifteen minutes, but the time dragged interminably. Now it had come down to it, I found the most difficult task to be making myself trust that Wooster would not bungle it, or come to harm through some mistake of my own. I am unaccustomed to being outside of my own control, and I found during that fifteen minutes that it _ate_ at me, itching and gnawing at the inside of my ribs like a living thing, the knowledge that I was thoroughly powerless to act should something go wrong.

Outside of the square of moonlight let in through the window, the ward was very dark, whitewashed walls and olive-khaki furnishings washed out into charcoals and blues. I counted my breaths, forbidding myself to give into anxiety, and listened.

I had almost become distracted counting breaths by the time Wooster snuck back into the ward, and my eyes snapped open suddenly at the _shush_ of his bootsoles, the anxiety in my chest leaping up into my throat. But it was only him, and he was alone, and smiling, cheeks flushed from night air and nerves, eyes even bigger than usual and bouncing a little helplessly on the spot, visibly brimming with nervy energy.

'I did it!' he hissed. 'Just as you said, old thing, got the code words right and everything, down to the pips, just as we practised! What a wheeze! What a-- what a lark! By jove.'

'Wooster', I said, quiet as I could, and then, seeing that it hadn't penetrated: 'Bertie.'

He blinked several times in rapid succession, then shook his head like a dog and took a seat on the edge of my bed like he didn't quite trust his knees. 'Gosh. That was an adventure and no mistake.'

I have observed that Wooster has very little capacity for hiding his feelings; his face is like particularly expressive putty, and broadcasts even the slightest tremor of emotion. Now, under the wide-eyed, giddy excitement and relief, he looked very young, and scared. As a medical orderly, he dealt with plenty of responsibility every day, but nothing like he'd just done, bearing the full weight of that responsibility himself. That might have more impact even than the knowledge of the potential danger.

Men react in different ways in the aftermath of fear or violence-- or any kind of mental upheaval, good or bad-- and as such, require different methods of calming and reorientating. I have had some considerable experience of this during the past three years, and given what I had gleaned about OMO Wooster's psychology, I judged that some small, anchoring physical comfort would be most effective. I laid a hand on wrist, and gripped it gently, feeling the gallop of his pulse and the night-chill on his skin. It was the correct move; he let out a shuddering breath, and his shoulders dipped.

'Then all went according to plan?'

He nodded, keeping his voice low to match mine. 'Down to the whatsit. The cove was there sharpish at oh-one-hundred, just like you said. Rather like being in a school pageant, what? I said my lines, he said his lines, I said my lines...' He shrugged.

'It is often the case, Mr. Wooster; there is often a sense of anticlimax when one cannot _see_ the results of one's work. But I promise you, you have done a very good thing.' I squeezed his wrist again. 'And I am grateful for your assistance. People's lives will be saved because you were willing to sneak out to those stones for ten minutes tonight.'

He blew a breath of air between his lips, shaking his head. 'It is a dashed rummy thing, isn't it? Makes you think-- well, makes you think something, anyway; the Wooster lemon's all a bit muddled at the moment to come up with properly juicy words.'

Despite myself, I smiled. 'You should retire for the night, you've done your duty; _Endormez-vous du sommeil des justes_.'

I did not know whether I would be able to sleep, but I felt _accomplished_ , and satisfied, and indeed grateful-- both to Wooster and for the fact that I had been able to transmit my information, that the Ministry would be able to take action on it. Even without sleep, it would be a better night than many for the past weeks.

It was not until some days later that I received a telegram in return, handed out by an orderly making her distracted rounds with a stack of post; _Message received, action being taken, thank you for report._ I had been hoping for confirmation without knowing whether I would receive it, and now, holding onto the little piece of paper, I could all but feel my body melt back into the bed with relief.

When Wooster came around that evening with his usual dosage and fresh bandages, I showed him the telegram, and he positively lit up, 'I say!' before dampening his enthusiasm with a cough and a dart of his eyes. 'Ehm, that is to say, emissary from your lords and masters, eh? What's the blighter say, then?'

I smiled wide enough to show teeth; Wooster blinked, and I very nearly laughed and alarmed him further. I am a reserved individual by nature as well as by training, but at the moment, I was so filled with a particular contented feeling of fellowship, that my trust had been well-founded and my cobbled-together plans successful, I saw little point in restraining myself. So I smiled, and nodded, and needed to say nothing more specific than that. Wooster grinned right back for a moment, before harrumphing and reining himself in, and setting to idly humming some jaunty showtune while he saw to my bandages.

My own tastes in music run far more towards the classical, but I could not say in this instance that I minded; OMO Wooster, as it turned out, had a fine voice.


End file.
